Qualia

[Wyman]

Gingko:

As we have seen in previous adventures into this topic there are a number of arguments in support of qualia. Naturally, to be matched by an equal number of arguments denying qualia. Some arguments also make an attempt to "bridge the gap".

But it never gets boring to some us, right?

How about this argument against 'qualia' as 'what it feels like to....'

When we solve a problem, we often get a sensation such as a jolt of energy or adrenaline and say things like 'A lightbulb went on in my head' or 'Eureka!'

It is easy sometimes to equate this 'feeling' with knowledge or problem solving. However, sometimes we find that we get this 'feeling' and then our epiphany turns out to be untrue.

We are then resigned to the fact that the feeling is merely an (sometimes)accompaniment of knowledge, but not unique to knowledge, as we also get it when the solution proves false. Then we reflect that perhaps this accompanying 'feeling' is not even all that unique - perhaps it involves similar physical reactions as go on when we are surprised, or remember something, or cold water is splashed on us.

In the case of qualia as being the 'subjective feeling of seeing yellow' - what if you saw yellow without the feeling - such as when you are being shocked by an evil scientist who holds up a yellow triangle in front of your face and asks 'what do you feel now?' If the shock 'overrode' all other feelings, would that make the yellow triangle not a quale? Or what if the exact same feeling of seeing a yellow triangle were associated also with hearing a musical note? Does that make the note and the yellow quale somehow related?

[raw_thought]

“Maybe I'm not on the same page with you on terms. A perceived triangle is a visual representation of photons striking your retina. It appears in your 'visual field.'”
Wyman
Is that visual field physical? Of course not. There is no triangle in your brain. Are you claiming that the neurons firing are the same thing as a triangle? That is like saying that holding a CD of Mozart’s music is the same as hearing it.

[GreatandWiseTrixie]

“Maybe I'm not on the same page with you on terms. A perceived triangle is a visual representation of photons striking your retina. It appears in your 'visual field.'”
Wyman
Is that visual field physical? Of course not. There is no triangle in your brain. Are you claiming that the neurons firing are the same thing as a triangle? That is like saying that holding a CD of Mozart’s music is the same as hearing it.

I read about the brain it said the visual representation was analogous to physical space, like an arrangement of neuron pixels a screen in the mind.

[Ginkgo]

“Maybe I'm not on the same page with you on terms. A perceived triangle is a visual representation of photons striking your retina. It appears in your 'visual field.'”
Wyman
Is that visual field physical? Of course not. There is no triangle in your brain. Are you claiming that the neurons firing are the same thing as a triangle? That is like saying that holding a CD of Mozart’s music is the same as hearing it.

This is the classical mind/body problem. Is an idea or concept the same as the physical events going on inside our heads? Well, it doesn't seem to be the case. The experience of hearing or seeing something and the physical events that occur in the neural system and the brain don't seem to be identical, or even related.

For example, a person viewing a yellow triangle on the wall might claim that are seeing a yellow triangle. If we were to us a MIR machine all we would ever see is the brain registering certain electrical and chemical impulses occurring. Nothing we are looking at inside the head resembles anything like a yellow triangle, yet the person having the experience reports that that see a yellow triangle.

[GreatandWiseTrixie]

“Maybe I'm not on the same page with you on terms. A perceived triangle is a visual representation of photons striking your retina. It appears in your 'visual field.'”
Wyman
Is that visual field physical? Of course not. There is no triangle in your brain. Are you claiming that the neurons firing are the same thing as a triangle? That is like saying that holding a CD of Mozart’s music is the same as hearing it.

This is the classical mind/body problem. Is an idea or concept the same as the physical events going on inside our heads? Well, it doesn't seem to be the case. The experience of hearing or seeing something and the physical events that occur in the neural system and the brain don't seem to be identical, or even related.

For example, a person viewing a yellow triangle on the wall might claim that are seeing a yellow triangle. If we were to us a MIR machine all we would ever see is the brain registering certain electrical and chemical impulses occurring. Nothing we are looking at inside the head resembles anything like a yellow triangle, yet the person having the experience reports that that see a yellow triangle.

Not from the reports I read. From what I read they brain has a physical equivalent of yellow triangle.

[Wyman]

“Maybe I'm not on the same page with you on terms. A perceived triangle is a visual representation of photons striking your retina. It appears in your 'visual field.'”
Wyman
Is that visual field physical? Of course not. There is no triangle in your brain. Are you claiming that the neurons firing are the same thing as a triangle? That is like saying that holding a CD of Mozart’s music is the same as hearing it.

This is the classical mind/body problem. Is an idea or concept the same as the physical events going on inside our heads? Well, it doesn't seem to be the case. The experience of hearing or seeing something and the physical events that occur in the neural system and the brain don't seem to be identical, or even related.

For example, a person viewing a yellow triangle on the wall might claim that are seeing a yellow triangle. If we were to us a MIR machine all we would ever see is the brain registering certain electrical and chemical impulses occurring. Nothing we are looking at inside the head resembles anything like a yellow triangle, yet the person having the experience reports that that see a yellow triangle.

If there were a yellow triangle,would an MIR be able to represent it?

[Ginkgo]

Gingko:

As we have seen in previous adventures into this topic there are a number of arguments in support of qualia. Naturally, to be matched by an equal number of arguments denying qualia. Some arguments also make an attempt to "bridge the gap".

But it never gets boring to some us, right?

How about this argument against 'qualia' as 'what it feels like to....'

When we solve a problem, we often get a sensation such as a jolt of energy or adrenaline and say things like 'A lightbulb went on in my head' or 'Eureka!'

It is easy sometimes to equate this 'feeling' with knowledge or problem solving. However, sometimes we find that we get this 'feeling' and then our epiphany turns out to be untrue.

We are then resigned to the fact that the feeling is merely an (sometimes)accompaniment of knowledge, but not unique to knowledge, as we also get it when the solution proves false. Then we reflect that perhaps this accompanying 'feeling' is not even all that unique - perhaps it involves similar physical reactions as go on when we are surprised, or remember something, or cold water is splashed on us.

In the case of qualia as being the 'subjective feeling of seeing yellow' - what if you saw yellow without the feeling - such as when you are being shocked by an evil scientist who holds up a yellow triangle in front of your face and asks 'what do you feel now?' If the shock 'overrode' all other feelings, would that make the yellow triangle not a quale? Or what if the exact same feeling of seeing a yellow triangle were associated also with hearing a musical note? Does that make the note and the yellow quale somehow related?

We might be able to build a computer that has the ability to recognize certain colours. The recognition comes about if the machine has the capacity to interpret different wave lengths of light. The machine would always respond with an accurate interpretation of a wavelength by assigning a colour to a particular wave length. Obviously, the machine in this particular example, doesn't know "what it is like" to experience a colour. There are no phenomenological aspect associated with the process of interpretation, the machine has an ability to recognize colour.

Opponents would quickly claim that when it comes to humans there is a phenomenological aspect to experiencing or hearing that cannot be explained in physical terms. On the basis of colour and qualia you might find an "inverted spectrum argument" interesting.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_spectrum

The argument is that unlike machines humans do have a phenomenological aspect that accumpanies

[Wyman]

Gingko:

As we have seen in previous adventures into this topic there are a number of arguments in support of qualia. Naturally, to be matched by an equal number of arguments denying qualia. Some arguments also make an attempt to "bridge the gap".

But it never gets boring to some us, right?

How about this argument against 'qualia' as 'what it feels like to....'

When we solve a problem, we often get a sensation such as a jolt of energy or adrenaline and say things like 'A lightbulb went on in my head' or 'Eureka!'

It is easy sometimes to equate this 'feeling' with knowledge or problem solving. However, sometimes we find that we get this 'feeling' and then our epiphany turns out to be untrue.

We are then resigned to the fact that the feeling is merely an (sometimes)accompaniment of knowledge, but not unique to knowledge, as we also get it when the solution proves false. Then we reflect that perhaps this accompanying 'feeling' is not even all that unique - perhaps it involves similar physical reactions as go on when we are surprised, or remember something, or cold water is splashed on us.

In the case of qualia as being the 'subjective feeling of seeing yellow' - what if you saw yellow without the feeling - such as when you are being shocked by an evil scientist who holds up a yellow triangle in front of your face and asks 'what do you feel now?' If the shock 'overrode' all other feelings, would that make the yellow triangle not a quale? Or what if the exact same feeling of seeing a yellow triangle were associated also with hearing a musical note? Does that make the note and the yellow quale somehow related?

We might be able to build a computer that has the ability to recognize certain colours. The recognition comes about if the machine has the capacity to interpret different wave lengths of light. The machine would always respond with an accurate interpretation of a wavelength by assigning a colour to a particular wave length. Obviously, the machine in this particular example, doesn't know "what it is like" to experience a colour. There are no phenomenological aspect associated with the process of interpretation, the machine has an ability to recognize colour.

Opponents would quickly claim that when it comes to humans there is a phenomenological aspect to experiencing or hearing that cannot be explained in physical terms. On the basis of colour and qualia you might find an "inverted spectrum argument" interesting.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_spectrum

The argument is that unlike machines humans do have a phenomenological aspect that accumpanies

There doesn't seem to be much of an argument, actually, just a statement that we have a 'phenomenological aspect to experiencing.'

[GreatandWiseTrixie]

If the inverted spectrum is true the world might as well be a hallucination, or a multiplayer game where every client sees different textures from the host, but still overall the game is playable.

[hammock]

[...] There is no triangle in your brain. Are you claiming that the neurons firing are the same thing as a triangle? That is like saying that holding a CD of Mozart’s music is the same as hearing it.

Would it make a difference if there was a brief electrochemical pattern that resembled a triangle? When in a casual thinking mode, most people believe the objects and events of the world to be omniphanic (things universally show themselves just as they do in perception, without the biological apparatus and consciousness associated with the latter's maze). Thus, pebbles or flowers or pixels or whatever else arranged as geometrical patterns can be visual manifestations or tactile sensations of such configurations to themselves and to anything else that acquires a relation to them across space. [The enhanced olfactory abilities of dogs and the echo-radar of bats could suggest manifested odorous and aural equivalents being possible as well.]

Even materialists who are normally hip with what "matter is really like" independent of mind, who therefore think experience is emergent, who judge that nothingness accordingly follows death... May still be infrequently omniphanic, not fully taking into account how one view would conflict with the other (or more likely, not caring). The belief usually isn't expressed directly by anything we say or write, but what certain other observers (the caring minority?) might be forced to infer from some of the reactions and responses (betrayed by such, so to speak). Another way to put it: That there are professed omniphanic skeptics / disbelievers who are nevertheless "in the closet holders of a view which at least roughly resembles panexperientialism" is a hypotheses which the "worried" group may have to fall back on in order to explain the other group's puzzling response / reaction incongruities.

[Ginkgo]

“Maybe I'm not on the same page with you on terms. A perceived triangle is a visual representation of photons striking your retina. It appears in your 'visual field.'”
Wyman
Is that visual field physical? Of course not. There is no triangle in your brain. Are you claiming that the neurons firing are the same thing as a triangle? That is like saying that holding a CD of Mozart’s music is the same as hearing it.

This is the classical mind/body problem. Is an idea or concept the same as the physical events going on inside our heads? Well, it doesn't seem to be the case. The experience of hearing or seeing something and the physical events that occur in the neural system and the brain don't seem to be identical, or even related.

For example, a person viewing a yellow triangle on the wall might claim that are seeing a yellow triangle. If we were to us a MIR machine all we would ever see is the brain registering certain electrical and chemical impulses occurring. Nothing we are looking at inside the head resembles anything like a yellow triangle, yet the person having the experience reports that that see a yellow triangle.

If there were a yellow triangle,would an MIR be able to represent it?

Seems plausible. Brain mapping is probably a reasonably advanced science. Certain areas of the brain are associated with particular functions. I guess it would be possible for someone to say "Yes, we can see from the activity that this person is using their sense of vision", Equally, possible would be the claim, "We can see from the live scan this person's brain is particularly active in the area associated with speech".

It might be possible well into the future that a neurologist examining a live scan might say, "Yes, this person is thinking of a yellow triangle". However, I don't think this changes anything. There would still be nothing in the brain that resembles a yellow three sided figure.

[GreatandWiseTrixie]

forgot to mention about the inverted qualia thing. If you find a person with no taste in art maybe it's cuz they have inverted qualia.

i said it before and ill say it again. the brain has a visual structure that physically maps visual input analogous to the physical space in which it was recieved. this is old news.

in plain english, the brain sees an upside down apple, then puts it on a screen in the brain that is in physical space and physically the same representation of apple. like a pixel array except of brain matter.

[Ginkgo]

“Maybe I'm not on the same page with you on terms. A perceived triangle is a visual representation of photons striking your retina. It appears in your 'visual field.'”
Wyman
Is that visual field physical? Of course not. There is no triangle in your brain. Are you claiming that the neurons firing are the same thing as a triangle? That is like saying that holding a CD of Mozart’s music is the same as hearing it.

This is the classical mind/body problem. Is an idea or concept the same as the physical events going on inside our heads? Well, it doesn't seem to be the case. The experience of hearing or seeing something and the physical events that occur in the neural system and the brain don't seem to be identical, or even related.

For example, a person viewing a yellow triangle on the wall might claim that are seeing a yellow triangle. If we were to us a MIR machine all we would ever see is the brain registering certain electrical and chemical impulses occurring. Nothing we are looking at inside the head resembles anything like a yellow triangle, yet the person having the experience reports that that see a yellow triangle.

Not from the reports I read. From what I read they brain has a physical equivalent of yellow triangle.

I'm sure it does, but the argument is that this equivalence does not resemble a yellow triangle. Neurons don't fire in a yellow triangular pattern. There is no neural core, or centre of consciousness within the brain for this type of activity to take place.

[Ginkgo]

i said it before and ill say it again. the brain has a visual structure that physically maps visual input analogous to the physical space in which it was recieved. this is old news.

in plain english, the brain sees an upside down apple, then puts it on a screen in the brain that is in physical space and physically the same representation of apple. like a pixel array except of brain matter.

Seems plausible, but the idea of a "viewer" has problems.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_theater

[GreatandWiseTrixie]

I sure it does, but the argument is that this equivalence does not resemble a yellow triangle. Neurons don't fire in a yellow triangular pattern. There is no neural core, or centre of consciousness within the brain for this type of activity to take place.

I said it was analogous to a LED screen of pixels. Yes it fires in a triangular pattern. Like a screen of pixels displaying a yellow triangle.

Reading up on Cartesian theatre will edit soon.

Okay so I read that book before about the theatre. That link seems hypothetical, but I've read else where outside of Dennet's book about there actually being such a thing in the brain.

Supposing there isn't lets look at it from another angle. Let's say sound waves are no longer sound waves but electrical light waves when presented to the stream of consciousness. Well that would explain why musical styles takes getting used to, and why dog music and cat music sounds different than human music. Because sound waves are not the absolute, they just form memories and associations that stick over time. C3 is not really C3, it might be A4 but we percieve it as C3 so it might as well be C3 because we are used to it being called C3 for so long.

However looking at cross species behavoir it would imply a consistent and absolute visual perception with minor differences in fov viewing angle.

Evolutionary speaking it would makes sense, designing motion recognition and touch sensors and spatial depth perception but a visual center that doesnt match with physical space has to be translated each time would be inefficient.

Perhaps it is all translated and it seems to match with the spatial depth perceptors. Therefore what we see is not true but it feels true because our spatial recognition is incorrect as well. But what I read a few years ago says the cartesian theatre does exist, so our vision would accurately represent what is mathematically present. It would also explain why music science is so complex and inconsistent, because our musical perception is "translated" from the mathematical essence of the soundwaves themself, so we have to compensate with our mathematics for the mental distortions.